“One day is worth a thousand tomorrows.”
Benjamin Franklin

Now defines there.

Everyone wants to get there. There, a place nestled away waiting in a future day. When troubles have subsided and problems figured out and all that we need, we have. What a glorious day when future arrives washing all worries aside and displacing every cursed moment! All counted as well when we cross that line out of this moment grinding relentless and long into the next chapter of our lives. Ease erases difficult and alleviates pains. So we think and so we live for there and someday.

I strain through the day now to look ahead missing the details that are steps leading there. Honestly, I don’t always want to be here now because being here isn’t always easy.

Book deadline, publisher to find, work projects due, blog schedule to keep to, etc., all floating around what truly matters. I want to be there where things are better and resolved and inviting.

I find myself living this way. I imagine the same holds true for you as well.

It is quite easy to let go of the day spoiling in familiar problems and nagging issues for something better ahead.

There is now, only matured and measured by days lived behind. The settled idea of life ahead of us being better is the draw, but the reality comes crushing when days we live without seemingly getting one step closer only seem to pile high.

Two problems with getting to there.

The first and most telling of a person’s likelihood of actually reaching that day brighter in life, “What is there?” Happiness swings unhinged, tossed always by circumstance and situations, by feeling, not love lasting and an idea of some glorious untouchable refuge waiting ahead. “My marriage will be better when the kids are a bit older.” Life will be easier when I get the promotion.” In the well observed, ringing words of Christopher Wallace, ‘mo money, mo problems’. If what your hands hold now do not give cause for happiness, lasting joy and satisfaction may very well always escape you, no matter the moment. Life spinning in the day-to-day from one to the next all feeling the same. All the while, hoping to get there. Somewhere better. A brighter day ambiguously floating in your heart. That is the way to lose in life. Living for there undefined. Hoping to be rescued out of mundane circumstance, sinking today. You must be working toward something defined. Life is now. Only so much can exist in the promise of something better ahead.

Now defines there. What lies ahead relies much on how you live now. Waiting will not get you there. Wanting will not either. There is found by those who live now walking toward something defined. In each day, joy exists but often overshadowed by discontentment and wanting. Many live with the illusion that today is not as worthy of living as tomorrow. Waiting and wanting; living less, missing it all and never going to get there. Not one day better is found by not living. There and someday come to those consistent souls who push on through thick and thin and sinking moments with the sight ahead in view but not as worthy as now. Life comes to those who live.

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:34, The Message)